Not sure about how to find
the best wedding venues in London and fast. By the end of this video, you will have our fool
proof venue searching steps on how to find a venue in
London quickly and efficiently. For the best uncensored
wedding planning advice, so you can cut through the crap and plan at your wedding with ease make sure that you hit
the subscribe button and also the notifications bell so that you can be notified
every single Tuesday when we upload a new video. As a former wedding planner, I have used these steps
with clients living inside and outside of London
to find a wedding venue which matches their ideal
wedding venue criteria and now it's your turn.
So number one, the first thing that you want to do is sit down together. Yes, this is a task that you can both do hand
in hand as a wedding couple. Two heads are always better than one and so this will cut the time in half, finding and making a shortlist of venues which meet your ideal
wedding venue criteria. Number two, outline your wedding venue
specifications and priorities. Now in a previous video, we
talked about the foundations and everything that you should do. I think there's about nine steps before you kick start
your wedding planning. Now, the first thing, well, the second thing that
we said was really important, but the most important thing
was outlining your priorities as a couple for your wedding day. It's important that you do the same thing for your wedding venue. So sit down and each of you decide on five priorities for your wedding. By the time you finish you
should have 10 in total combined.
Now I'm gonna put a list
in the description box or maybe a download link,
I haven't decided yet. Of all of the priorities that are applicable to your wedding venue. Once you have those 10 between you, pick five which mean
the most to both of you. You'll find that some of them
will probably overlap anyway, so it'd be really easy for you to do.
Those five are gonna help
you with the next step. So let's move on to number three. Step number three, if your main priority
was food and catering, this next step is applicable to you and the following steps
will be applicable to anyone irregardless of what
their priorities were. Now this is where you can
really quickly hone down in the amount of time it takes you to find a venue in London. If you have a specific caterer that you both want for your wedding, who you have used for
all family celebrations that you found at someone else's wedding, where the food and the service
were absolutely phenomenal and amazing, it is really
important at this stage to go to that caterer's website. So Payal is a caterer that we have identified
who does this beautifully. You can go straight to the
venue's tab on their homepage, and straight away scroll down to, they list international venues.
They're everywhere, you can
scroll down straightaway and see all of the locations where Payal provides catering services. So it's listed the locations
and all of the venues that they can access in those locations. So they're in Manchester,
Lancashire, Yorkshire, Newcastle, Sheffield, Cheshire. They're everywhere. If you go to the South, focus on London, they list a great selection of venues which are really fantastic and gorgeous. Just to name a few, Tewin Bury
Farms is a personal favorite. Hedsor House, which we love. So then if we go to FAVOR
Catering, these are caterers that we have used on a number
of different occasions. Again, they make it really easy for you. There's a venue tab on their homepage. You click on that and it takes you to a
list of all the venues that they are located at.
So you got Tithe barn again and Braxted Park, North brook, Kew Gardens, loads of different spaces which are really highly recommended. Why I wanted to show you this
list for FAVOUR catering is that I know for a fact that
Hedsor House is another venue which they can provide
catering services for but it isn't listed here. Once you have that information, you can now go and give
your caterer a call. There may be some venues
which they have not listed yet or they haven't updated
their site recently. So just give them a ring and see whether or not there
are more venues available for you to kind of shortlist. So rather than start looking
for venues with the idea that you really want a specific caterer and then finding out that that then you won't allow you to use that caterer, do this first.
Number four, you are going
to love me after this one. (chuckles) Directories, now there are
loads of directories out there that you can search
for your wedding venue. However, the one that I
would say stands out the most for us is Coco Wedding Venues. Now the reason why Coco Wedding
Venues stands out for us, is not only the look and feel of the site, it's the functionality and the ease at which you can find a space which is perfectly suited to you and your vision for your wedding day. So what we're gonna do now is talk you through Coco Wedding Venues
and how amazing it is.
This is the Coco Wedding Venues site. So if you just go straight in, you'll be taken to the homepage and straight away they'll start to show you a list of stunning
venues that they have. Now you can firstly go and
just start your search here but before you do, just scroll down because what they have which
is really great is a list of categories of different venue styles. So for example, if you have
a rustic wedding venue, if you're looking for
a rustic wedding venue, they put here how these venues
will match your criteria. So back to nature, mismatched attire, tweed lace, freshly picked flowers. If this matches your criteria, they've done the same over here, classic elegance, coastal
cool, bohemian beats and they've defined the
different types of venue styles.
So we are gonna click on classic elegance and we're gonna look at those venues. Now this is the same as
if you had gone straight to start search but what it does is it whittles down straightaway
all of the venues which meet within the venue style that you're looking for, classic elegance. So it does a lot of the hard work for you. However, you still want to go and whittle that down. So if you just scroll to the top, this is what you would have seen if you had gone straight
to search for your venue, a number of different categories
for you to choose from. Now they've got location, capacity, venue type and wedding style. If we go into location first, it gives you all of the
locations within the UK. Now obviously this video is all about finding a wedding venue, get my teeth in, in London fast. So we're gonna go to London, but if you're searching for anywhere else or considering areas
outside of London again, this site will work perfectly. So it gives you all of
the different options within London, Central
East, North, South and West.
We're gonna go with Central London, and then you've got capacity. So in the capacity section, it's giving you all of these categories to define your wedding
depending on capacity. What I would say is the
majority of the couples that we have, have between 100 to 300 within their wedding, so I'm gonna go with the party one, and then you've got venue type. So here you can choose the
type of venue that you want. So you've already decided
on the type of style that you want from your venue and you know the location
and the capacity, but here you can go further
into looking at your priorities. So for example, if you
want a dry hire space. Now, dry hire is when you have a space and you have literally no
restrictions on that space. So you can bring in your own caterer.
You bring in all of your own supplies. You are just getting a
four walls in most cases, a ceiling and a roof, maybe
some tables and chairs but that will depend on
the different venues. If you have an elderly relative, you need disabled
facilities, it's all in here. If you're looking for
festival themed wedding, it is all in here. So we're gonna go with dry hire, because dry high is really
difficult to find within London and I wanna explain something
else to you later on. And then you go down to wedding style. Now we've already
clicked classic elegance, but I'm also gonna click rustic romance. So it'll give us a few
different variations but again, if you wanna
see the other venues that are coming up
within these categories, you can go and play around with that. It's all dependent on how solid you are in your venue criteria specifications and that'll be outlined earlier on. So straight away, we've got
a featured venue on the top, which have probably paid for that spot, and maybe won't necessarily
fit in with your criteria, but you can check them out.
And all of the other venues that are listed should
match your criteria. In most of the ways that you
have selected, if not all. So dry hire is really
hard to find in London. If we go into Shoreditch Studios and we can just do a quick view and it will give you
all of the information that you need really, really quickly. So we can see that it falls within the capacity of 120
to 150 for the ceremony, but also for the reception and we can have even more
guests for the reception.
So at a minimum 120 guests
can attend your entire wedding from the beginning to the
end with more being able to be invited for the evening reception. What we need to note here is for catering it says couples choice, now
if you want a dry hire space, you want to be able to
bring in your own caterer, couples choice is what
you will be looking for whenever you do a quick
view with all of the venues. They also go into whether
or not pets are welcome, if you have the venue exclusively, if there's any accommodation
available on site, if they have a late license, if they have a license for
you to be married there, it's all in this section. You can go into venue details
to get further information. You can look at more
pictures of the venue, what it looks like set up.
All of the information you
need to know is on the top. And again, you scroll down and you get further information, you get the direct contact information, so you could contact them
straight away from here but I wouldn't recommend that. There's a step that you need
to do before you go into that and also really important testimonials. So down here, you've got
real life testimonials from couples who have used
this space for their wedding. So you can read through these testimonials and get a really good feel
for how good the venue is. So we're gonna go back
to the original page and all of the venues that they gave us. So just to let you know the difference, if you look at Hotel Café Royal, which I know has in-house catering.
Here you go, in-house catering. So here the couple does not have a choice, there is a specific caterer
that Hotel Café Royal have that they use and you are tied
to using that caterer only, so it is not dry hire for this space. So the next step would
be to create a shortlist. So literally Coco make it really easy, here is a link, you just click on that and you've been added to the shortlist. Now we're gonna add a few
different spaces to the shortlist. So let's go with RSA House, also Ennismore Sessions, The White Horse and just to give you an idea of all of the different
things that are here. So then you go into, view your shortlist and it will take you
through to all of the venues that you have shortlisted
which is amazing. So there are a few in there
that I put in there previously but here you will be able
to see every single venue which kind of struck a chord with you.
You can then contacts. This is another great
feature they have in site. You can contact all of the venues at once. So they'll allow you to
use a wedding contact form. They've got a picture of
all of the venues there. You can again at this point remove any that you've changed your mind about or you don't like the look of. You then go into venue details, you fill out all of your information here, the year you're getting married, the amount of guests approximately, and you submit your form. Now after you've done that, your message is sent out
to your chosen venues and you receive a copy
of that email as well, the venue will then get in
contact with you directly from the information that you
have requested on this form. It's amazing, amazing. They make it so, so easy. So now you know why I rave so much about Coco Wedding Venues. They are not the only directory
available in the market. So do your research and also we'll leave a
few links to great ones that we've found in the description box, so you can play around with them.
However I would say that this one will show
you an array of spaces and leave You spoilt for choice. So comment below and let us know if you are looking for a dry hire space or looking for a package
option for your wedding. We know how hard it is to find
dry hire spaces within London so we're gonna leave a link
for a few dry hire spaces that we know of which are really, really amazing and flexible. And also if you have come across any, we would love to know about them. So just drop a link in
the description below to their website or the name
of the caterer themselves so that we can check it out to.
Making a shortlist is
super, super important. When you're actually going through the Coco Wedding Venues site, tick everything which appeals to you, no matter what the reason might be or how small it might be, tick every venue that you come across, which speaks to you. You are able to make a
shortlist within the platform. Once you've done that together.
Go to the shortlist and then use your wedding venue priorities and specifications, which you
should have already outlined as a couple to shortlist
that shortlist even further. By the end of that you shall
have maybe 5, 6, 3 venues which meet that criteria. The next step is to pick up the phone and get in touch with those venues. Pay attention at this point. How you are greeted and spoken to from the initial stages
will set the standard and tone for your entire wedding. Now, you don't want
them to be all over you, but you want them to be warm, attentive and really efficient. So pay attention to how they greet you, how easily it is to be
directed to the person that you need to speak to.
And when you get through to them, make sure that they have
a direct contact number or email address that
you can use going forward to save you time whenever you
need to speak to them next. We did a video which
outlined all of the questions to ask your wedding venue before you book and before you even go on to a site visit. So make sure that you
check out that video. I'll leave a link to the
description box below. So make sure that you're asking
all of the right questions. You'll find it super, super easy and super fun if you do it this way. So now you know exactly what to do to source your wedding venue
within a matter of minutes, work together as a team, don't forget to use
your top five priorities and also go to the link in
the description box below or the list in the description box below, which will outline all of the priorities that you can choose from for
your wedding venue search.
It's that easy. Also, before you leave, we have started up a Facebook community of like minded wedding planning
bosses like yourselves, so that you can talk to each
other and also get advice tips and free uncensored
wedding planning guidance from ourselves. So make sure you go to the link in the description box
below to join us there and we look forward to seeing you soon.
If you have any wedding
planning friends out there, who are also on this journey, don't forget to let them
know about this channel so we can support you all together. Check out these videos on the 14 things that you're guests don't care about and also how to kickstart your
wedding planning with ease. If you have liked this video, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and also ring that notification's bell so you'll be notified every single Tuesday when we upload a new post.
